Inflammation Helps With Bone Regeneration?

Drexel University researchers, working with scientists from the University of Sydney in Australia, have identified how inflammation can be critical when it comes to bone repair.

As indicated in the July 29, 2016 news release, “Their findings, published this week in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, show that a new type of ceramic scaffold causes inflammatory cells to behave in a way that is more regenerative than scaffolds that are currently used clinically.”

“Your cells can’t swim. Any time you have a large piece of bone missing, a scaffold is needed to close that gap, ” said Kara Spiller, Ph.D., Drexel University associate professor in the School of Biomedical Engineering, Science and Health Systems.

“Spiller’s collaborators at the University of Sydney in Australia recently designed new ceramic scaffolds that promoted bone regeneration in animals, although the researchers did not know why these particular biomaterials thrived, ” said the news release. “The Drexel research team suspected that the scaffolds’ favorable outcomes must be attributed to macrophages—swallowing white blood cells that digest foreign particles.”

“After deriving macrophages from monocytes (another type of white blood cell), the researchers seeded the cells on to three different types of scaffolds and evaluated the differences in their gene expression after several days. Then, to determine if the macrophage behavior was dependent on the release of soluble factors from the scaffold, they compared the cells in direct contact with those that were separated from the scaffold with a membrane.”

“The researchers found the new ceramic scaffolds caused macrophages to transform into an M2c phenotype, meaning they express genes associated with remodeling. This behavior was not seen in the scaffolds that have been approved to be used in humans. Their findings also showed that macrophages must be in direct contact with the scaffold in order to regenerate tissue.”

Dr. Spiller told OTW, “Different materials used to induce bone regeneration have different effects on the body’s inflammatory response, with potentially major effects on healing. The next step is to use the same strategy that we did in this study to tease out the effects of different biomaterial properties on the behavior of inflammatory cells. Once we have that information, we can design the biomaterials to promote healing via the action of the inflammatory cells.”